


Follow, Sweet Children

by Flyting



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Body Horror, Colonial Witchcraft AU, Harm to Children, Historical Fantasy, Hux is Not Nice, Hux is a Puritan and Kylo is a witch, M/M, Puritan Hux, Puritans, Religious Guilt, Sexual Repression, halloween fic, together they plot a murder, witch Kylo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-14
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-14 22:48:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8031970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flyting/pseuds/Flyting
Summary: Massachusetts, 1663. Armitage Obedience Hux has always known that there is a wickeness in him, as real as an organ. There had been rumors of a witch of the northern woods since Armitage had first set foot in the colonies years ago, as a too-small boy wrapped in his father’s second-best cloak. He expected some wizened crone. Not a sweet-faced, strangely lovely young man, with black eyes and briars in his hair and lips the color of blood.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Oh just what I need, another WIP AU. But it IS nearly Halloween...

Mercy Tollet was missing.

 

Word spread quickly, leaping from mouth to mouth like wildfire, until the entire village was ablaze with it. Such a misfortune was not unheard of; wolves and bands of restless heathen natives sometimes stalked the woods surrounding the town. But the Tollets were godly Christians, upstanding citizens, wholly devoted to God. For such a tragedy to befall them, of all families, sent fear through the village like lightning.

Farmer Tollet's youngest was a round-faced, raven-haired thing, whose father called her ‘little shadow’ for the way she trailed along behind her eldest brother. She had just turned seven the past winter.

It was Mortdecay Tollet, his plump cheeks flushed red and his dark hair in disarray, who had burst into the meetinghouse at a run, babbling that his sister had vanished. _Taken_ , he said, when he could be calmed, startling the minister, who was attempting to pour the boy a glass of wine. Young master Tollet had left that morning to check his father’s hunting traps north of the river, his sister, as ever, at his heels. When suddenly her cheerful prattle behind him had ceased.

Turning, he realized with slow dread that the girl had disappeared from the path.

 _I called for her, but she didn’t answer,_ the boy gasped. Fearing for the child, he had followed a faint disturbance in the undergrowth, like some animal had recently bolted through. Trees pressed in on every side, wild and thick with branches, which ripped at his loose breeches and scored his soft skin. At this point he holds out his arms, baring the scratches there in testament to his story. The day grew long, and hot, and the boy grew frantic, but only the dark, quiet sounds of the forest answered his tearful cries.

Then, through the trees, Mortdecay Tollet said that he had caught a glimpse of—something. He thought it his sister, the child lead by a tall figure in a tattered black hood.

The boy paused to gulp wine as a frisson of muttered prayers and drawn crosses pass through the assembled men. He made to pursue the figures, _but there was a glimmer of eyes from beneath the cowl and a growl like some foul beast and suddenly I couldn’t breathe- it was as if some unseen hand had taken me by the throat and was choking me- I couldn’t-  
_

Young Mortdecay Tollet, whose sweet sister always followed at his heels, collapsed into tears then, entreating God’s forgiveness, and could not be stirred to say any more.

A search party is quickly mustered. A man from nearly every house is present. In groups of two or three- for no man will venture the northern woods alone at night- they spend the rest of the waning daylight hours scouring the forest surrounding the village. As darkness stretches into night, the men trickle back into the village, silent and wan.  
  
  
They never do find any sign of Mercy Tollet.

 

* * *

 

 

Armitage Obedience Hux has always known that there is a wickedness inside him, as real as an organ. It pulses and throbs, blood-hot, just beneath his skin; likes to whisper sugar-sweet temptations in his ear. Promises. Mockeries.  
  
_For each man was appointed by God as befits his station in life, and it is only because of the mercy of God, the maker and governor of the world, through Christ that he shall be saved._ A whip-thin, shriveled man of sixty, Minister Glanvell’s voice wobbled as he spoke the sermon. Armitage feels his ears perk up at the word ‘mercy’, his eyes darting unthinkingly to the Tollet family, who sit bowed together in prayer, two pews over. Farmer Tollet’s shoulders shake once as his body is rocked by a quiet sob. Beside him, his wife is silent, her head bent, but little Magnify Tollet – now the youngest again- unclasps his hands to scrub at his eyes.  
  
Armitage devours their grief with his eyes. It feels like overhearing a secret.  
_  
Wicked._ He chastises over and over in his head, like running his tongue over a sore tooth. _Wicked, wicked, wicked._  

He looks away before his stepmother can catch him staring, though he isn’t sure why he bothers to hide it. The truth of him and his wickedness has always been plain to see in his flame-red hair; that inheritance of his harlot mother. He is marked by it. Damned from his earliest breaths by the nature of his conception.  
  
_God did preordain men either to salvation or damnation, without any respect of their faith or earthly good works, as befits his will and pleasure, and it is God alone who knows them that will be saved and them that will perish. Though we may enjoy one day sun and rain and fruitful seasons, we may the next be sent to fearful punishments, may be remitted to a flaming purgatory in punishment for our sins..._  
  
Maratelle Hux has never forgiven him for his sins, the cardinal of which was simply _being_ ; being the son of his father, but not through her- Brendol Hux’s wife.

In her eyes, he bears the penance of his father’s sins as well; not only his infidelity- though Armitage, with his father’s pale eyes and his whore-mother’s hair, is her constant reminder of that- but the sin of carting his bastard son across the sea instead of leaving the child behind in London, that pit of depravity, with the harlot kitchen-maid who birthed him.  
  
But Brendol Hux would see his son raised right, and no one has ever been able to thwart father when he set his mind to something. He was stubborn as stone and twice as hard. It was why Brendol had been elected magistrate, despite his more conspicuous moral failings. No one ever dared to defy him.

Armitage still remembers clinging, terrified, to Brendol’s trousers as the ship made land; a too-small boy wrapped in his father’s second-best cloak. He had closed his eyes, afraid, when his father grabbed him up around the middle with both hands and passed him across the chasm between the ship and the rowboat. He had not opened them until the wooden hull of their little rowboat had shuddered up against the sand. It was the newness of it all that he feared, not the sheer drop down to the water below. Brendol would never have let him fall. 

Maratelle’s grumbled objections to his presence were worth little, not when she had yet, in five years of marriage, to give Brendol any true-born children.  
  
The intervening years would change that, of course. The first was a still-birth the year after they arrived; the child born dead. Perhaps predictably, her temper had towards him soured even further after that. Armitage understood even then that his stepmother would rather it had been him with the cord wrapped around his neck.  
  
There were six more pregnancies over the next ten years, two of which brought forth his plain, dutiful sisters. The rest of Maratelle’s children were lost in the womb, or else shortly thereafter in the cradle. The wickedness in him, which was only a small thing then, was secretly pleased; not at the loss of his half-siblings, for he felt his father’s grief as keenly as if it was his own, but that he remained Brendol’s only son. He had been the first, it whispered. He had hollowed out a place in his father’s heart, like a nest, and he would not share it with another.

Then, when Armitage was nearly twenty, Abel was born.

Abel Providence Hux, only son of Brendol and Maratelle Hux.

Armitage tries to mimic his father’s joy, though he feels none himself; to offer his congratulations even as the words stuck in his throat. Brendol, whose hair had already gone grey, claps his firstborn about the shoulders and laughs. Armitage cannot remember his father laughing when either of his sisters were born.

 _You finally have a brother, after minding the girls all this time,_ Brendol says, a smile warming his normally stony features. He doesn’t want a brother. Armitage wants to drop to his knees and cling to his father’s legs, the way he did when he was a child, to beg for comfort from the only person who ever favored him.

He doesn’t.

Maratelle, for her part, does not let him so much as touch the baby until Abel is fully a year old. Not that he had any desire to do so, but finding it forbidden to him makes him spiteful nonetheless. She has always sensed his wickedness; that true nature that lies just beneath his skin. From the moment she saw Armitage she has known that he is damned, damned, damned, and she will not let him touch her only son lest his wickedness should rub off on that soft, pink skin, like a stain.

Or perhaps, knowing him to be a wicked little boy who has only grown into a wicked man, she believes him capable of _every_ possible sin. Perhaps she has imagined him creeping into her bedroom at night and smothering the life out of the infant which she has brought forth to replace him.

It was when he realized this, staring at his stepmother silently across the dinner table as she fussed with the baby, that Armitage thinks his wickedness truly began to grow out of control.  


After the meeting has concluded, father instructs Armitage to take his brother into his study to practice his scripture, while Brendol consults with the other town officials about the Tollet girl. Abel, now twelve, is churlish in his displeasure. Armitage remains silent, though he is no more pleased about the arrangement than the boy is, only more adept at hiding it.

“ _Enough_ ,” Brendol finally snaps, over Abel’s whining, and Armitage is momentarily startled to attention by the tiredness in his voice, “Mind your brother, I’ll be home soon enough.”  
  
With no authority of his own, Armitage must make do with borrowing his father’s. He curls a long, pale hand over the boy’s narrow shoulder, which scrunches up under his palm. “You heard him, come on.”  
  
At home, he makes a seat for them both by the fire, claiming father’s chair for himself and leaving Abel to sit on the hearth stone with the book balanced on his lap. He sets Abel with a passage to read while he allows his mind to drift in and out, lulled by the boy’s steady plodding through the scripture. 

He thinks of the whispered rumors that Mortdecay Tollet saw his sister dragged off by a witch, and tries to imagine what awful things such a creature might have done with the child.

“ _Disheartened, he'll return, incited to_ _v- vemence_ _against the holy_ -“

“Vehemence,” Armitage corrects. “Try it again.”

“Incited to veh-menence-“

“Vehemence,” he says again, crisply, giving his younger brother a narrow stare when the boy pulls a face at him.

“Vehm-“

“ _No._ Start over. From the beginning.”

“I don’t have to listen to you,” Abel hisses spitefully. The boy has his mother’s dark, delicate features, and her light dusting of freckles, but he and Armitage share their father’s cold green eyes.

“Yes, you do. Father said you’re to mind me until he gets back.”

“I don’t,” he repeats, full of spite. “I don’t have to listen to a _bastard.”_

Armitage feels his blood run cold, then furiously hot as a blush spreads up his neck. “What did you say?”

“You’re a _bastard._ You aren’t really my brother- your mother was a _whore-“_

“ _Quiet-“_ Armitage silences him, lashing out to pinch the skin of the boy’s forearm hard between bony fingers until he yelps in pain. “Who told you that? _”_ he asks, surprised at the viciousness in his own voice. “ _Who told you to say those things to me?”_ He can feel his lip curling up in a snarl. He feels half-feral, and the wickedness in him sings its delight at the idea.

Abel doesn’t answer, his fat cheeks and baby face screwed up in an expression of petulant loathing, but he doesn’t need to. Armitage knows exactly who he got it from. Maratelle is the only person who has ever dared to call him _bastard_ in his father’s household.

“That hurts,” Abel whines, when Armitage digs his fingers into his soft flesh and _twists_.

“ _Good_. Apologize.”  
  
“No.”

“I’ll tell father-“

 _“And I’ll deny it.”_  
  
The boy whines like a dog. Then his mouth falls open, and he sucks in a big spiteful breath, preparing to call for his mother.

Seething, Armitage changes tactics. He pulls back his hand, releasing Abel, green eyes bright in the firelight.

“Do you know what happened to Mercy Tollet?” he asks.

“They said she got lost in the woods and died.” The boy rubs at the place where his brother has pinched him.

“She didn’t get lost. The witch took her.”  
  
Abel pauses. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not,” Armitage says innocently. “The witch lives in the northern woods and takes away bad, nasty, _rude_ little children. She cuts them up and eats them, bones and all.”

“No, you’re lying. You’re always a liar-“

“If a child is very good, like Mercy, she scrapes all the fat off of their bones first. She boils it up and uses it to brew a flying potion. If she smears it on her body, the witch can fly wherever she likes.” Armitage can feel the flicker of firelight on his face as he leans forward in his chair. It reflects in two bright pinpoints in his pale eyes.

Fear casts long shadows across Abel’s face, brings out the white of his eyes. “Stop it, Army-“ he whines. Abel hasn’t used his old nickname since he was too small to say Armitage.

“She’s _very_ ugly. Witches usually are, you know. The devil takes their souls, and along with it their beauty. But that’s why she changes her shape- to hide her stringy grey hair, her long, dirty nails, her pale, wrinkled skin, like something that’s never seen the light-”  
  
“ _Stop talking-_ ”  
  
“I’m going to call for the witch tonight and tell her what you’ve said to me. I’ll tell her how you’re a _nasty little brat_ who called me a bastard and a liar. Then when you’re asleep she’ll come into your room and crawl into your bed-“  
  
“You _wouldn’t!”_ The boy is breathless with fear. “I knew you were wicked, I knew it! You talk with witches! You’re evil and you’re going to be damned! _”_ The bible slams to the floor.

The words sting his skin, and the pain only makes him more vicious, a kicked dog lashing out at the boot that has struck it, but the telltale thud of the front door signifying father's return halts him where the child’s frightened pleas had failed. It makes him jump, as if he’s been scalded, and he leans back in the fireside chair, away from Abel.

Armitage runs the boy's hateful words over and over in his mind-  _wicked, evil, bastard -_ trying to dull the sharpness of them, like scratching at an itch beneath the skin.  
  
_Perhaps I should become a witch myself, if I’m so wicked-_ the words, which sprung to mind in a moment of rage, die on his tongue, unuttered.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for period-consistent bigotry

Though it was his wickedness that lead him to Kylo in the first place, it would be something far more sinful that kept him there.

Armitage is at work in the yard chopping wood, the last of the warm afternoon sun pricking at his pale skin, when father summons him inside the house. Brendol Hux is more than wealthy enough to keep a slave for this sort of work- had done, until Armitage was fifteen and the man ran off with a passing band of heathen natives- but he says that it will ‘put a bit of muscle on him’ for Armitage to do it instead.

It isn’t his place to complain; he must earn his keep somehow. Laziness is a sin. And it is Armitage who, at thirty, has yet to marry and start a home of his own.

Abel was apparently born with muscle enough, for the only chores required of him are aiding Maratelle in the cooking and cleaning, and feeding the animals. It is Armitage who chops the wood, Armitage who mucks and mends, who carries and fetches, and who oversees father’s business dealings, ensuring their continued comfort, while the elder Hux serves the community as Magistrate. When they needed a new fence it was Armitage who was tasked with building it, alone.

Wiping the sweat off the back of his neck, he arrives in time to hear Brendol bid Abel to fetch their coats and rifles.

“Sir?”  
  
“Armitage, come in. _Now_ ,” Brendol adds, the last word sending the boy scurrying upstairs. A firm word from Magistrate Hux is often enough to send the most hardened man scrambling to obey.  
  
"Your letters are on the desk, sir. Four to go out with the next ship. One for Mister Parker at the Company, two for the solicitors in London, and another for Captain Bridge. All you have to do is sign them."

"Fine," Brendol says, distracted.  
  
"Sir?"

Though they are of a height now, Armitage still feels small beside his father. Brendol has brute power in every limb, layered over his bones like muscle. Where Armitage simply sprouted up and up, he is great beast of a man, with thick arms and wide shoulders that betray a youth spent as a sailor before he made his name as a merchant.

“Thomas Dyer has disappeared,” Brendol mutters to his elder son, when the younger is out of earshot. Age and wealth have made him grow thick around the middle.  
  
It’s a moment before Armitage recalls the name. “Widow Dyer’s little one?”  
  
A plump, fair-haired creature, the boy had been helping his mother with the washing by the stream north of town when he vanished from under her sight. His mother’s only child. He was just turned seven years.  
  
“Could it have been a wolf?” Armitage asks. He has never hunted a wolf before, and does not think he wants to try.

“It could.”

"What aren’t you telling me?”  
  
“We got a rider from Bolton Mill this morning.”

Armitage can feel a frown creasing between his eyes. Bolton Mill stood far north of their village, across the river and on the other side of the vast forest. There was a road such as it was, twisting and half-wild, but it was still a long, perilous trip for a lone man on horseback, and the degenerates who overran Bolton Mill- heretics who called themselves _the Society of Friends_ and romped naked in the town square, or so Minister Glanvell said, anyway- rarely bothered to make the journey. They knew where they weren’t welcome. What could possibly have brought one of them here?  
  
“He came to warn us.” Brendol continues. “Said they’ve lost ten of their children since midwinter. Six vanished south of the village. The rest of some wasting illness, which has now begun to spread to the livestock.”  
  
“South?” Armitage echoes. He does not waste an ounce of concern on the heretics. They courted their own damnation.

The forest stretches between them in his mind’s eye, dark and impassable. A massive labyrinth of trees and shadows, unexplored, unknown.  
  
But not, it seemed, uninhabited.

There had been rumors of a witch in the northern woods since Armitage had first set foot in the colonies as a child. Back then there was little more to the town than a handful of rickety wood and oilcloth shacks clustered together around the fort like frightened children around their mother’s skirt. A wall of rough-hewn logs was their only protection against all the evil, monstrous things that lurked in the dark forest looming just beyond the clearing. It had seemed such a small place, then, surrounded on all sides by so much darkness. He remembers running along the inside of the tall fence and letting his outstretched hand smack against each log until his palm itched and his fingertips went numb. He always imagined that there was something on the other side mirroring him. Some unknown _thing_. He would dart back and forth, making a game of trying to trip it up. _Follow me, follow me, this way…  
_

Whenever an animal died suddenly or a frost clung to the ground for too long, people would say it was the witch. Hunters and traders who ventured into the northern woods sometimes said they saw a dark figure in the trees, a scarred figure in a tattered black robe.  
  
He has learned not waste his breath with the sort of inane statement his father detests. Brendol Hux doesn’t suffer foolishness, particularly from his sons. So Armitage doesn’t say _you think it really was a witch,_ nor _we’re going to kill it,_ however much the questions burn in his mind. That much is obvious. So he says nothing, waiting. Obedience is in his very name, after all.  
  
Abel returns, his tread heavy on the creaking wooden steps. Maratelle is close behind him. She has one hand tight on the boy’s shoulder, the other clutching their coats to her chest. Worry ties little knots in her voice.

“Where are you going?”

Afraid for your precious boy? Armitage thinks hatefully. Afraid the witch will snatch your treasure away?

 “The wolf that took Mercy Tollet has grabbed another child.” Brendol says, silencing Armitage with a warning glance. “We need every man for a search party.”  
  
“Surely you don’t mean Abel too?”  
  
“He knows how to shoot, and we need another pair of eyes. He’s more than old enough.”

This isn’t the first time they’ve disagreed on this point. Though she usually knows her place better than to disagree with her husband in front of others, Maratelle coddles her son like no other, and when it comes to the safety her her _precious little sweetling,_ she is as hard and immovable as Brendol. Armitage sleeps in the attic. He has heard them through his floorboards; furious, heated words exchanged in the depths of the night.  
  
“He’s barely more than a child.”  
  
“Hardly. He’s nearly thirteen.”  
    
“He’s a better shot than I am,” Armitage offers generously, schooling his features to innocence, just to savor the vicious glare which she levels at him. He doesn’t want Abel with them any more than she does, but if he must be out in the woods until midnight freezing his arse off, he would be warmed by the knowledge that she was trapped at home pacing the floor.  
  
But his vote of facetious confidence only hardens her further against the idea. “This wolf has already taken two children. I won’t add mine to the list-” Maratelle hisses.

“It wasn’t a wolf. It was a witch took Mercy Tollet.” Abel’s voice, soft in the darkened stairway, wobbles with fear. “She chopped her up and ate her bones.”  
  
There is a pause.

“Where did you hear that?” Brendol Hux’s voice is sharp, demanding.

 _Little traitor,_ Armitage has time to think, venomously, before the boy says, “Armitage told me.”

He can feel the heat of the hard stare Brendol levels at the side of his face, and, cleverer than Lot’s wife, he keeps his eyes carefully fixed on a cracked bit of stone on the floor beside the fireplace, refusing to meet his father’s eyes and be turned to salt by them. Despite his efforts, his shoulders hunch a little under the invisible weight of his father’s anger.

“We’re not really going to hunt a witch, are we?” Abel asks, shrill with fear. “What if she tries to take me?”

“Nothing’s going to take you,” Maratelle hushes him, adding her glare to Brendol’s. “You’ll stay right here-”

“But they’re evil and ugly, and Armitage said they-“  
  
“ _Stop_ _whining_ ,” the words slip out between his teeth, quickly. “You just don’t want to go, little _coward_ -“  
  
Brendol growls his name in warning, but in the heat of his irritation, Armitage doesn’t heed. _Disobedient. Wicked wicked wicked._

 “I’m not a coward!” Abel shouts back. His plump little cheeks are red with indignation. “I’m not! You’re a-“

“-cowardly little baby, hiding behind his mummy’s skirt-”  
  
“ _Enough_. Not another word- _from either of you_ ,” Brendol adds when Abel’s mouth falls open. His tone brooks no disagreement as he passes his verdict. “Abel, stay here with your mother. Armitage, come along.”

 _That isn’t fair it isn’t fair it isn’t fair-_ poisonous indignation builds on his tongue, choking him, but Armitage knows far better than to protest.

“Yes, sir,” he says, stiffly. Obedient.

 

 

The looming wood and thatch house, with its darkened windows like watching eyes, sits on the far side of town, a stone’s throw from the road to the new dock, where the name _Hux_ is emblazoned on the manifests for half the cargo that comes into town nowadays. The new house is a far cry better than the two-room shack where his sisters were born, and where Armitage would curl up beside them in the dark. Abel has never lived anywhere else but the new house.

As they walk, he waits for the upbraiding that doesn’t come.

“You are far too old to be bickering like a child with your brother.”                                                                           

“He isn’t my brother,” the words slip out, quiet and hateful, before he can dam them back. _Wicked, wicked, wicked._

He can feel Brendol’s sharp green eyes- the same as the ones that stared back at him from the wash basin in the mornings- on him in the darkness. “He’s my son, same as you are. What else would that make him?” It was his Magistrate voice, hard and impartial. Bearer of justice and wisdom. Armitage hates it.

“I can think of a few things,” he mutters, petty, instead of saying what is really in his mind, which is: _He’s your son, I’m just your bastard._

His father spits a curse, and Armitage cringes on instinct, like a beaten dog. “I’m _tired_ of the two of you at each other’s throats every minute of God’s day.” Before he can open his mouth to respond, Brendol continues, “And don’t try for a moment to pin all the blame on him. I’m not a fool. You wind him up like a clockwork toy and you think I won’t notice. Why? What good comes of it? You were never like this with your sisters.”

It’s true. Armitage loves his younger sisters as well as he thinks he’s capable of loving anyone. It’s a thin, meagre sort of love, but it’s the best he has. In a famine, there is never enough to go around. Someone has to go hungry.

“I’m sorry, sir.” He can taste the lie on his tongue.   
  
Brendol can taste it too, because he growls, "If every word that falls out of your mouth is going to be a lie, then do us both a favor and hold your tongue."

He does not say  _yes, sir._

 

Men trickle up to the village gate as the sun dips below the tree line. In the orange flicker of torchlight, pale faces are wan. Grim. No one speaks above a mutter.

Armitage holds his tongue as they approach, biting it between sharp teeth to hold the words in ‘til the taste of copper floods his mouth. The sourness of blood turns his stomach, but he doesn’t speak. _Hold your tongue,_ Brendol had said, and obedience was next to Godliness. Obedience is his very name. He won't break that covenant.

Despite his fury, his face sets itself into a mask of haughty calm with the ease of long practice. He may be a _bastard,_ but he is Brendol Hux’s bastard, after all.

There are already a few dozen men clustered in little knots of three and four along the gate. A sizeable crowd. The word of Magistrate Hux commands obedience from more than just his sons. Although- sharp eyed, Armitage notices that Minister Glanvell has sent his servant Paul in his stead, undoubtedly preferring a warm bed to tromping through the forest in the dark. Nor does he see his weak-jawed little brother-in-law Continent Sibbes. Brendol will have words about that when Armitage tells him, no doubt.

Farmer Tollet is there with his eldest, Mortdecay, the two of them standing apart from the others, just outside the circle of orange light. A little island of grief unto themselves. Young master Tollet is pale, his eyes rimmed-red and ringed in dark circles like bruises. Armitage wonders if the boy cries at night. If he sniffles into his pillow for his poor lost sister.

A chilly wind sends leaves skittering across the ground. It will be autumn soon. The evenings have already turned cold.

Standing, stiff-backed beside his father, he scans the rest of the crowd. Alijah Bellamy inclines his head in greeting to Armitage when he catches him staring, then quickly looks away. Alijah’s cheeks colour faintly pink in the torchlight. They used to play together as children, but Alijah has never much spoken to him, not since they were both thirteen and Armitage bid him to close his eyes on a dare then darted forward, quick as a thief, and pressed a kiss to the corner of his mouth. It had been a game- Alijah had such soft pink lips, prettier than any girl’s. He wanted to know what they tasted like. More- the wickedness in him had wanted to know if he _could_ do it, if he dared, if Alijah would _let him-_

Alijah had stammered and blushed like a sunrise, and then run home and told his father.

Brendol had paid the fine dutifully enough, a few shillings for _indecency,_ and then taken Armitage home and lashed him within an inch of his life. Armitage still had a white scar just above his tailbone, a slash where the belt had gone wide and ripped open the soft, pale skin of his lower back. He can only see it if he cranes his head over his shoulder and stands on his toes in front of the mirror, but he knows it’s there nonetheless. Sometimes he thinks he can feel it burning there when he is especially _wicked._

Continent Sibbes is the last to arrive.


End file.
